誓
Symbols Relationships
vow
ㄕˋ shì
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
A solemn promise, sworn rather than merely given. Chinese marks the solemnity in the character itself.
Before you commit
Choose with care誓 is heavy and formal. It belongs to weddings, courts and battlefields, and using it lightly reads as theatrical to a Chinese eye.
JapaneseThe same glyph is used in Japanese as chikai, a vow, with much the same solemnity. It will not read as specifically Chinese.
At small sizesFourteen strokes, a busy top over a speech radical. Top-heavy, so give it height rather than squeezing it.
Meaning
To swear; a vow, an oath.
The character used for wedding vows, courtroom oaths and sworn resolve.
Other characters for “vow”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts